Beyond the Green

The dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 remains a turning point in Pakistan’s history and evokes memories of war and the humiliating defeat of our armed forces. The catastrophic war of 1971 is also billed as the fundamental event that made Pakistan realize the need to maintain its national unity and stave off any attempts by India to impinge on its internal affairs.

Over the last five decades, historians have revisited this turbulent event and analyzed the blunders that led to the loss of East Pakistan. While a vast majority of these accounts are fraught with biased interpretations of the war, Ikram Sehgal and Bettina Robotka’s Blood Over Different Shades of Green: East Pakistan 1971: History Revisited falls within the category of books that offer an objective view of the events that led to the fall of Dhaka. This is a commendable feat because Sehgal witnessed the conflict at close quarters and – as Robotka states in the preface to the book – “personally… knew all the main characters of the [1971 war]”. Sehgal, therefore, uses the benefit of hindsight to offer rich details on how discriminatory policies and a soaring sense of disillusionment led to the break-up of Pakistan. With the alacrity of an eyewitness and a historian’s eye for facts, Sehgal is able to revisit the events of 1971 with candour. As a result, it comes as no surprise that Blood over Different Shades of Green succeeds in providing an intimate glimpse of the causes and consequences of the war.

Through a detailed scrutiny of the cultural identity of East Bengal, the authors plumb the depths of the past to explore how the 19th century Bengali Renaissance fuelled the search for identity and inspired a surging sense of “all-inclusive Bengali nationalism”. Sehgal and Robotka state that “there was a widespread sentiment in West Pakistan and its army, that East Pakistanis were not true Muslims, that their version of Islam was closer to Hinduism and, therefore, they must be brought onto the correct path”.

The authors methodically examine how these sentiments pushed the erstwhile East Pakistanis onto the fringes and culminated in a demand for a separate nation. Readers are taken on a journey that helps them understand how the burgeoning economic disparities between the people of East Pakistan and West Pakistan resulted in discontentment. The incessant delays in fostering development and progress in East Pakistan are also discussed at length. In addition, the authors have highlighted how the issue of selecting the country’s national language took a political turn and provided an impetus to the civil war.